After a thoughtful pause, Sneakabout glumly noted, “I wish I were with the fellows.”
“Why aren’t you?” Adon asked, watching the halfling suspiciously, still not comfortable with the demihuman’s sinister bearing.
“They wouldn’t have me,” the halfling answered, shrugging.
“It was his fault they came in the first place!” grumbled Berengaria, pointing a gnarled finger at Sneakabout’s face. “He had his own pony and a magic sword. That’s what they wanted!”
Adon turned to Sneakabout. “Is that right?”
The halfling shook his head and looked at the ground. “Maybe,” he mumbled. Then he lifted his gaze. “But I doubt it. They wouldn’t have needed to raze the whole town to get what they wanted—they caught me on their way in.”
The halfling’s red-rimmed eyes grew hard and distant. “Say, you wouldn’t be going north, would you? I’d sure like to catch those Zhentish pigs!”
Kelemvor swallowed a bite of rabbit and said, “As luck would have it—”
“Kelemvor!” Adon hissed sharply. “We’ve got our own trouble.”
Sneakabout drew himself up before Adon. “Without your spellcaster’s book, you’ll need all the help you can get. I’m as fine a scout as you’ll meet outside of Elventree.”
Adon shook his head firmly. “I’m afraid—”
“He can ride with me,” Kelemvor noted flatly, his voice a throaty growl. “Where’s your sense of courtesy, Adon?”
The young cleric glared at the warrior for a long moment, once again irritated by Kelemvor’s refusal to listen to him. At last, he decided not to argue the point, as long as the fighter was willing to yield something to him. “Then we leave at dawn!” Adon said, summoning his most commanding voice.
Kelemvor would not be bullied. “No. The halfling dead—”
“Will be buried by halflings!” Adon finished, pointing at Kelemvor with a grease-covered finger. “You don’t care about these people! You only want to prove your curse is gone. Don’t you think we know that?” He glanced at Midnight, who was still staring at the remains of her spellbook. “Your test has cost us too much, Kel.”
The cleric put his hand on the raven-haired mage’s shoulder. He looked at the fire and added, “I just hope we can make it to Waterdeep without Midnight’s spells to aid us.”
The four companions left Black Oaks at dawn—hungry, cold, and wet. During the night, the orange fog had changed to a chill drizzle that continued to fall through the morning. Breakfast had been nonexistent. The halflings had eaten the last of the corn biscuits the night before, and in the gray morning light, the greasy hare looked appetizing only to Kelemvor.
Adon took the lead, suggesting they travel north to Eveningstar, then rethink their route to Waterdeep. Sneakabout made the mistake of saying he knew a shortcut, so Adon insisted that the halfling ride with him to act as a guide. Neither enjoyed the experience. Despite his loss of faith, Adon’s conversation was no less pedantic, and Sneakabout was not a tolerant listener.
Kelemvor, his brow gloomy and troubled, followed next. Twice, he tried to apologize to Midnight for losing her spellbook. Each time his voice failed him and he barely managed a croak.
Midnight came last, still too upset to speak. There was a hollow knot of panic and sorrow in her stomach. Since her sixteenth birthday, she had carefully recorded every spell she could learn in the book, and it had become almost an extension of her soul. Without it she felt barren and worthless, like a mother without children.
Still, all was not lost. Midnight still had several spells firmly committed to memory, and she could copy these down in a new book. Some were so common that, given time and the help of a friendly mage, she could easily relearn them. With a week or two of research, the raven-haired mage might be able to rebuild others. But a few, such as the phantasmal force and plant growth spells, were so alien to her way of thinking that she could never reconstruct them. Those spells were gone, and there was nothing she could do about it.
All in all, the situation was not as terrible as it had at first seemed. Unfortunately, that realization had not yet diminished Midnight’s anger. She desperately wanted to blame somebody for the book’s destruction, and since Kelemvor had been the one who had led them to Black Oaks, he was the easiest target.
But in her heart, Midnight knew that the warrior was no more responsible for the crisis than she was. He hadn’t thrown the spellbook in the fire, and even the halflings had not burned it in malice. It had been an accident, pure and simple, and nothing would be accomplished by venting her anger on friends.
However, Adon wasn’t helping to cool anyone’s temper. Several times, he had chastised Kelemvor for leading the company to Black Oaks, reminding the gloomy fighter that the spellbook would be intact if not for that detour. Amazingly, the warrior had accepted the assertion. Adon’s angry insight the night before had subdued the brawny warrior as no sword ever would, and Midnight resented the cleric for it. Despite her own pain, she did not enjoy seeing Kelemvor’s spirit broken.
Consumed by her melancholy reflections, the magic-user barely noticed as morning passed. By midday, the company was deep in the forest, and she still hadn’t set things right with Kelemvor. In part, this was because the path was too narrow for their horses to walk side by side. So, when Adon unexpectedly called a halt, she guided her mount forward and stopped at Kelemvor’s right.
“Kelemvor—,” she began.
Adon twisted around and held up a silencing hand. “Listen!”
Midnight started to object, then heard a loud rustle ahead. It came from far up the trail, and sounded as though an army were marching over a plain of dried leaves. Creaks and rasps, and then dull, distant thuds began echoing toward the company.
“What is it?” Midnight asked.
“I can’t imagine,” Adon replied.
Sneakabout slipped off Adon’s horse. “This is where I earn my ride,” he said, hustling up the path.
The halfling disappeared around a bend. For ten minutes, Midnight, Kelemvor, and Adon sat on their horses. The rustle grew louder, until it could more properly be called an uproar, and the creaks and rasps became squeals and groans. The thuds assumed a rhythmic cadence and grew into thunderous booms.
Finally, Sneakabout quickly came running back, his short legs carrying him at his best sprint. “Off the trail!” he screamed. “Now!”
The halfling’s face was so terror-stricken that no one even thought of asking for an explanation. They simply spurred theirs mounts and crashed into the forest, regrouping thirty yards off the trail.
When Sneakabout joined them, Adon started to question him. “What—”
The cleric didn’t have an opportunity to finish. A hundred-foot-tall sycamore tree stepped into sight, swinging dozens of branches like arms. As its roots twisted forward, an ear-splitting creak echoed through the forest. The ground trembled as the roots flopped onto the trail. Another sycamore marched behind the first, and behind it, a hundred more.
For an hour, the company watched in flabbergasted silence as grim sycamores marched down the trail. By the time the thousandth tree passed, the company’s ears were ringing and their heads were spinning. Kelemvor’s horse grew skittish, and he managed to keep it under control only with the greatest effort.
Finally, however, the last tree passed out of sight and the company returned to the trail. Their ears rang for the rest of the afternoon, precluding discussion of the peculiar sight. But as they rode northward, they saw thousands of huge holes where every sycamore tree in the forest had torn its roots free and marched off.